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American Morning

Iraq Elections

Aired February 19, 2004 - 07:19   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.


SOLEDAD O'BRIEN, CNN ANCHOR: U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan will likely recommend against direct elections to choose Iraq's interim government. He doesn't think such a vote can be held by the end of June. Diplomats believe that he will wait another week to make that recommendation, though.
Today, Annan plans to discuss Iraq's future with his special envoy, who just spent a week evaluating the political situation there.

Joining us this morning from Washington to talk about Iraq's political future is CNN analyst Ken Pollack, who's a research director at the Brookings Institution Saban Center for Middle East Policy.

Hey -- Ken. Good morning. Nice to see you, as always.

KEN POLLACK, CNN ANALYST: Good morning, Soledad.

O'BRIEN: So, we're expecting to hear from Kofi Annan that the direct elections cannot be held before that U.S. handover on the date in June, of course. A big boost to the administration, isn't it?

POLLACK: Absolutely. A huge shot in the arm. You know, the problem, Soledad, was that the agreement that the administration struck in November, called the November 15 Agreement, was starting to unravel. The problems were two-fold.

First, the United States was not addressing the basic security and services issues inside Iraq, causing lots of Iraqis to get increasingly unhappy with the United States' presence, starting Iraqis to start saying, well, look, if the Americans can't do it for us and they've been here for 10 months, maybe we need to do this ourselves.

And the second problem was that the U.S. had just fundamentally neglected the Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, the spiritual leader of the Shia community inside of Iraq. Administration officials talking to me said, well, you know, we just dropped the ball. We were -- we let him slip through the cracks.

And these problems opened it up to a whole bunch of other critics to come pouring in.

O'BRIEN: The $64,000 question, though, of course, that we have to hear from Kofi Annan, is, OK, well, what will he recommend then to take the place? What are the expectations, or what are the options?

POLLACK: Well, obviously, there are a whole range of different options out there -- everything from simply expanding the current Governing Council to going to another system similar to what the U.S. had devised with the November 15 Agreement, which, as you'll recall, was a very complicated series of different caucuses that would over a series of different steps produce a new interim government that would have been more representative of Iraq and therefore more legitimate, but not fully representative and therefore not fully legitimate.

No one really knows what Annan is going to come up with. But for the administration, this is enormously important, because the administration recognizes that the Governing Council, which they created last year, really isn't doing the job. It's not representative of Iraq. It has its own interests in many cases. And in many cases it is fighting Paul Bremer and the Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq. It needs to go, but Iraq is not yet ready for elections.

So, they need to come up with some kind of compromise. Right now, I think they'll take anything the U.N. suggests.

O'BRIEN: There are reports of an alliance between the Kurdish and Shiite political parties. I guess that falls under the category of politics makes some strange bedfellows. But at the same time, seriously, they are moving to marginalize the Sunnis, who used to control Iraq. What are the risks if that happens?

POLLACK: Well, certainly if the Kurds and the Shia go forward on their own, they are absolutely on a collision course with the United States. And obviously they've got some cards to play, and obviously the United States is in a much weaker position now than we were in, say, six or eight months ago to be able to really stop that from going forward.

And I think you could have a real nasty blowup between the Shia and the Kurds on the one hand and the United States. And it's one that no one is going to win, because ultimately the Shia and the Kurds can't push through elections if the United States is unwilling. By the same token, if the U.S. clearly opposes that, we will be seen as being unrepresentative of anyone inside of Iraq and opposed to the largest groups inside Iraq. The Shia and the Kurds have about 80 percent of the population between them.

O'BRIEN: Ken Pollack joining us this morning. Ken, thanks.

POLLACK: Thanks.

TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com.






Aired February 19, 2004 - 07:19   ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
SOLEDAD O'BRIEN, CNN ANCHOR: U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan will likely recommend against direct elections to choose Iraq's interim government. He doesn't think such a vote can be held by the end of June. Diplomats believe that he will wait another week to make that recommendation, though.
Today, Annan plans to discuss Iraq's future with his special envoy, who just spent a week evaluating the political situation there.

Joining us this morning from Washington to talk about Iraq's political future is CNN analyst Ken Pollack, who's a research director at the Brookings Institution Saban Center for Middle East Policy.

Hey -- Ken. Good morning. Nice to see you, as always.

KEN POLLACK, CNN ANALYST: Good morning, Soledad.

O'BRIEN: So, we're expecting to hear from Kofi Annan that the direct elections cannot be held before that U.S. handover on the date in June, of course. A big boost to the administration, isn't it?

POLLACK: Absolutely. A huge shot in the arm. You know, the problem, Soledad, was that the agreement that the administration struck in November, called the November 15 Agreement, was starting to unravel. The problems were two-fold.

First, the United States was not addressing the basic security and services issues inside Iraq, causing lots of Iraqis to get increasingly unhappy with the United States' presence, starting Iraqis to start saying, well, look, if the Americans can't do it for us and they've been here for 10 months, maybe we need to do this ourselves.

And the second problem was that the U.S. had just fundamentally neglected the Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, the spiritual leader of the Shia community inside of Iraq. Administration officials talking to me said, well, you know, we just dropped the ball. We were -- we let him slip through the cracks.

And these problems opened it up to a whole bunch of other critics to come pouring in.

O'BRIEN: The $64,000 question, though, of course, that we have to hear from Kofi Annan, is, OK, well, what will he recommend then to take the place? What are the expectations, or what are the options?

POLLACK: Well, obviously, there are a whole range of different options out there -- everything from simply expanding the current Governing Council to going to another system similar to what the U.S. had devised with the November 15 Agreement, which, as you'll recall, was a very complicated series of different caucuses that would over a series of different steps produce a new interim government that would have been more representative of Iraq and therefore more legitimate, but not fully representative and therefore not fully legitimate.

No one really knows what Annan is going to come up with. But for the administration, this is enormously important, because the administration recognizes that the Governing Council, which they created last year, really isn't doing the job. It's not representative of Iraq. It has its own interests in many cases. And in many cases it is fighting Paul Bremer and the Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq. It needs to go, but Iraq is not yet ready for elections.

So, they need to come up with some kind of compromise. Right now, I think they'll take anything the U.N. suggests.

O'BRIEN: There are reports of an alliance between the Kurdish and Shiite political parties. I guess that falls under the category of politics makes some strange bedfellows. But at the same time, seriously, they are moving to marginalize the Sunnis, who used to control Iraq. What are the risks if that happens?

POLLACK: Well, certainly if the Kurds and the Shia go forward on their own, they are absolutely on a collision course with the United States. And obviously they've got some cards to play, and obviously the United States is in a much weaker position now than we were in, say, six or eight months ago to be able to really stop that from going forward.

And I think you could have a real nasty blowup between the Shia and the Kurds on the one hand and the United States. And it's one that no one is going to win, because ultimately the Shia and the Kurds can't push through elections if the United States is unwilling. By the same token, if the U.S. clearly opposes that, we will be seen as being unrepresentative of anyone inside of Iraq and opposed to the largest groups inside Iraq. The Shia and the Kurds have about 80 percent of the population between them.

O'BRIEN: Ken Pollack joining us this morning. Ken, thanks.

POLLACK: Thanks.

TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com.